Because it's such a beautiful city we often overlook how densely populated Paris is. Because of that density, Paris has seen few modern constructions since the 1920s. It's reckoned 62 percent of its buildings date from 1949 and before, 20 percent were built between 1949 and 1974, and only 18 percent of the buildings remaining were built after that date. So it's perhaps no surprise that a Paris architecture studio is rethinking what Parisian housing can be. Their idea is to take standard housing typologies and mesh them into a dense but highly liveable block.

It’s their response to Réinventer Paris (Reinventing Paris), an ideas competition launched in November 2014 by Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. She invited teams to imagine the future of one of 23 sites around the edge of the city centre, with the added incentive that the winners can buy or rent the land “in order to carry out their projects while simultaneously conducting an urban experiment on an unparalleled scale”, she says.

Peripheriques Marin+Trottin Architectes have been shortlisted with their ambitious scheme, Paris par Nous, Paris pour Nous (Paris by us Paris for us). Earmarked for the Paris Rive Gauche plot in the 13th arrondissement, it is intended to encapsulate various ways of Paris living including “Family apartments, studios for young and not so young, large apartments for roommate”, according to the architects Emmanuelle Marin and David Trottin.

Paris by us Paris for us is up against three other teams for the Paris Rive Gauche site. Designed in white clay bricks, the 12-storey, 136-apartment complex echoes Parisians’ heritage while drawing on digital culture, and our ‘sample and collage,’ society, they add. As well as the 9000m2 of residential units, nearly 1000m2 would be dedicated to a gym, café, office space for local entreprises and co-working space.

It taps into the City of Paris’ brief to address the city’s urgent housing issues, “particularly in terms of housing and everything relating to density, desegregation, energy and resilience,” Hidalgo adds, “It is important in today's world to find new collective ways of working that will give shape to the future metropolis.”

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